My Keyboard
It’s the little things, like a new keyboard that makes the writing life joyful.
You may not be able to tell but I am typing this on a brand new keyboard, fresh out of the box…and here’s where this whole thing gets interesting (finally). According to the Apple Store employee my old one wore out because of “overuse”. And I am left wondering what that means. OVERuse? Of a keyboard. The mind boggles at what qualifies as OVERuse. It happens to be the keyboard attached to my iPad. I also have a computer that I use to write, so I’m not even typing all of the words that I type on this thing.
Here’s something you might not know about me: I have a left hand that doesn’t exactly work. I can grip things okay but I cannot extend the three middle fingers. It’s gotten progressively worse over the last fifteen years. Every so often I go for testing and they run electric current through me to determine what’s wrong. Guess what? Nothing is wrong.
So here I sit, with a hand that has “nothing wrong” and the knowledge that I killed an innocent keyboard with overuse.
I’ve been thinking about what it means to wear something out. Not break it but wear it out. Here’s my guess: Repetition. Typing “Detective Beldon” and “Blue Lake, Wisconsin” so many times the keys were quietly bored-to-death.
It turns out you can wear out a keyboard by writing a first novel. By plotting ten novels, actually, or at least by starting to. You wear it out by working through dialogue that won’t cooperate and character motivations that shift inexplicably. By rewriting the same opening chapters over and over again until you find the right voice. By showing up at your library booth day after day, even when three fingers on your left hand have apparently gone on strike.
I guess that makes me a writer.
Not because I say so, but because I overused a keyboard demonstrating it.